Subject: 3 Tourny Reports in 1 weekend. Date: Tue, 30 Dec 1997 06:27:56 EST From: Bale Djinn To: fkusumot@ix.netcom.com Harrisburg PTQ. Saturday I got up around 7am after about 3 hours sleep and waited for my ride to come pick me up. The ride up was uneventful cept me and my Level 3 judge buddy discussing obscure rulings, like the Cursed Scroll/Multiple target rule and how Serrated Aarow counters do *not* affect Mishra's Factory. A lot will say I'm wrong on this but as the rules are written right now and with the Mishra/Humility ruling making Mishra's ability to turn itself into a creature is External, the creatures P/T never drops below 2/2. Also according to these rules you can't Serrated and kill a creature under a Humility. The main reasoning behind all this is because to find out a creatures p/t you first take its Base P/T. In Mishra's case it doesn't have one officially, then you apply all inward effects like counters, (on d'angelos site, counters are specifically named) then you do all outside external effects like the Mishra turning itself into a 2/2. So the end result of a Mishra with a Aarow counter is it being a 2/2. This was confirmed by some higher level judges but I may be wrong on this but I don't think so. Of course this could change any day to re wordings or new rulings or whatever. Anyway I arrive in Harrisburg about an hour early and a line is already forming. I ask some DC area friends to borrow some cards I need and get my decklist together. Me and my friend discuss the ruling with Tony (Grey Matter Head Judge) he denies it and just says "it doesn't work that way". I feel kinda pissed cause if I was wrong, I was wrong, but I'd like some sort of rulings on why it "doesn't work that way". Anyway on to the report. Also this is not a winning report and I usually don't like to write/read reports that don't end up in the Top 8 but I feel that I got close enough to write this. Round 1 Ben List I'm writing this about 3 days after the tournament and I can't really remember what this guy was playing. All I remember is that I locked him up the first game and ran out of time the second so I got the match. Matches: 1-0 Duels: 1-0-1 Round 2 Feming Chan I know this guy from IRC and I've heard his name before, also on the pro tour. He's a really cool guy. He goes first turn land tax each game which isn't too great for me. He was playing the Alatar deck. First game I double mulliganed, which also isn't that great of a play :). I did topdeck a land and Tithe but it wasn't enough of course and lost to the weenie beatdown. Second game I draw horribly and die to a 4th turn Soltari Priest with 2 armors on it. Not too much strategy going on yet I know. Matches: 1-1 Duels: 1-2-1 Anyway at this point with 8 rounds to play I felt for sure I was out. It's hard to lose and make Top 8 playing Prison. Oh well I keep on. Round 3 Tim Gerhardt Well I play a 0-2 (which is superb for tie breakers I hear) and I feel top 8 slipping farther away. He was playing a newbie type "build it yourself deck". It was land destruction with Sudden Impact/Storm Seeker. The bad thing is I almost lost to this thing. I like holding cards and I could never draw an Armageddon or Winter orb and he kept going like, "after you draw I seeker you" ok I take 8. I was at 4 at one point and if he was a good player and top decked burn I would die. Oh well I finally draw a geddon and then Wise up with Gerrard and proceed to win 2 straight. Matches: 2-1 Duels: 3-2-1 Round 4 Ben Halpren Round 5 Jeremiah Hupka I don't remember anything about these matches. All I remember for these two matches is that it extended to a third game and of which I had to win with Damage. With Ben he swords 2 of my Mishras and I only had 1 left and I had Sylvan action going on Finally draw it and protect it and win with seconds left in both match. Thankfully neither one of these guys stalled me out. Matches: 4-1 Duels: 7-4-1 Round 6 Un-named. (Left out name for principal) A really good player and pretty highly ranked in Limited. He was playing Red/Blue Frenetic/Control. Before hand he's talking to his buddy on how Prison is a bad matchup for him. I certainly don't get confident since I usually don't think of myself as a great player and am never too confident, anyhow he's a good player so it will be hard. I may sound a little pissed during this round and I would not like to deter from this guys character but basically the match came down to me being stalled out in the last match. He wins first, I win second. I have Pyros and the like in from the Sideboard and I know he put in Havocs. During the last game when I was locking him up he makes a bullshit rules question and starts to debate about it. The question was whether I could announce an attack without any Creatures. Now I sincerely believe that he knew the answer to that question but still took the time to ask the table and spectators. He finally called over one of the Grey Matter guys but since Tony was the only actual Judge running it the Grey Matter dude answered the question but went and got Tony for a definate answer. Tony promptly answered him and the guy sat around a bit and said ok so we started playing again. Eventually 10 minutes were called and I noticed he seemed to start playing really slowly. By the time 2 Minutes were called he was at 7. This was the setup, my permanents = multiple diamonds, 4 Icys, Humility, Sylvan, Ernham (good combo with the humility, i know) a Mishra and a Worb. His permanents = Havoc. I was at about 9 life and safely away from death. The match was over, he was beat. Of course he had a couple minutes left and tho I did not expect him to concede, I figured he was going to be beat. I *know* he stalled me out. I wanted so badly to call a judge over to watch the match but I feel that Tony certainly wasn't a fan of me (for some reason I don't know) and he was busy watching the other match going on. (Lucarello playing prison). I felt helpless and deserved/needed this win. Everyone watching told me afterwards I was robbed. Tony comes over and says active player finish your turn. I ask for some time because of the rules question and Tony simply denies me this. My opponent was at 7 I had 3 points of damage going to him a turn, he had a Havoc for a permanent, and Tony denies me the time. A bystander later said he timed the amount of total time that was used up getting that rules question earlier, he said 3.5 minutes. Tony said "You can have as much time as it takes for me to see if there are any other matches going on." So I'm like well a Minute should be enough if he doesn't cheat me. So I start to attack putting him at 4, Tony comes back at that point and says active player finish your turn. I was pissed and angry but felt I deserved it for playing the deck I played. Anyway I was still in with a draw. First I would like to say that having 1 Judge run a 200+ person tournament is not fair. Second, if you feel you're being stalled out, CALL A JUDGE. Get a judge to watch your damn match so you can be treated fairly. My opponent took at least a minute drawing and choosing to discard and looking at his graveyard. Whatever. Get a Judge. Matches: 4-1-1 Duels: 8-5-2 So well I need to win the next two to get in. Round 7 Rob Hahn This is one of the main reasons I wanted to write this report. To simply say how much of an incredible guy and magic player Rob Hahn is. He was very friendly, a very good player, and in the end a great guy. He writes for the Dojo, and does some very good strategic articles for the Dojo and the Duelist magazine. First game he gets like 3 Mishras out and I plowshare one and very very quickly get a lock out on him. Within about 10 turns I have multiple Diamonds, 2 Icys and a Worb and have Geddoned. He concedes. He's a cool guy. Second game I sideboard wrong, a mistake, I only saw a couple dual lands cause of all the Mishras and it looked like he was playing Weenie. It turns out he was playing a Red/Blue/White control deck with multiple counterspells. I lose to Frentics cause I can't get by the countermagic. Third game I put in the Pyroblasts. I can't remember exact details of this match but he disenchants an early Sylvan (Which is the thing to do against a prison Deck with Sylvans BTW). Eventually I get him into a Worb/Icy lock and my Humility shuts down his Frenetics. We were running out of time and I was comfortably at 15 life and he didn't have any creatures in play I don't think and well he conceded the game to me. He could have not stalled and just played normal and would have gotten the draw. Yet he conceded to me. I like to think in that situation I would have conceded to but I still appreciate his sportsmanship and his game play. He was an excellent opponent and made no errors. Afterwards he showed me his hand, no countermagic and multiple Auras and some creatures. We discussed what he could do and his plan was to plop down an Aura and hit my Humility so he could start nailing me with some creatures. It was all pretty moot cause I had Worb out and his plan would have been slowly restricted and I had another Icy and Gerrards coming up. But I thanked him kindly for the concession and he congratulated me on the deck and we parted. Matches: 5-1-1 Duels: 10-6-2 Final Round Rick Caldbeck. This dude came down from Mass with 2 of his buddies and all 3 placed in the top 8. One of them qualifing. Congrats. He was also playing a Red/Blue/White control deck. In the first game I lock him up and I can't remember whether I beat him with Mishra or he just conceded. Well anyway the second game would be the decider. It basically came down to who was a better top decker. I sat at 1 life. I had the full lock out on him and he had only 1 mana available to him a turn. I had a sylvan out and was Tithing trying to look at new things so I could get the Gaes Blessing and filter in the 2 Gerrards Wisdoms in the graveyard so I could win. I had about 15 cards and he had about the same. I had a Pyroblast and a Counterspell in my hand. I was feeling kinda safe. He had 2 bolts left in his deck cause he played the other ones earlier in the match. He pulled one of the bolts and bolted me. I countered he Forced I pyro'd. He said done. I draw and get the Gaee's, filter back in the Gerrards and draw a card, not a Wisdom. He goes I tap his land he says done. I look at 3 new cards and there was nothing there, I pull the tithe and say go. He draws and says done. I tithe at the end of his turn look at my deck and just shuffle it. I look at 3 new cards... no Wisdom. I say done. He untaps and bolts me, and I lose. At this point we had about 10 minutes left and neither of us could win in the alotted time. So we debated what to do and finally decded on flipping a coin. 10 hours of gameplay ending up on the luck of a coin flip. He flips the coin and it falls off the table a couple times, finally it stays on the board and rolls for a while. All the spectators watch the coin roll and it finally hit something and landed and I lost the flip. I congratulated him and said good luck. During the match I hit about 6 Frenetics with Serrated Aarows and won all the flips... irony stings :). Anyway so I end up 5-2-1 for my first LA PTQ and I did better than I expected with 3 hours sleep and playing quite a mind taxing deck. I wasnt mad at the coin flip but I was a little upset at all the ways I had a chance to get to the top 8 and just didn't. Oh well. The Top 8 consisted of 3 Fruity Pebbles (Beat this deck) and 3 Prisons, the guy I played and I think some Black weenie? Pebbles and a Tax/Scroll Prison qualified. All in all not a bad tournament. I apologize for not enough strategy to be gained from this report, if and when I write another I'll do it earlier and take some mental notes. My Deck (a couple times I was asked, is that Kiblers prison? or is that Finkels prison?, gotta love the Dojo, oh well I guess prisons are prisons and are all basically the same) 3 Sylvans (a must. if you don't get the sylvan out you will probably lose) 2 Gaes Blessing (I'd like to have 3 but just can't fit it) 1 Pyroclasm (Good enough but doesn't take care of fat green or Soltari Priests) 2 Counterspells (eccentrically low, I know, I'd like to raise it up to 3 but just don't know what to take out.) 4 Tithe (of course) 3 Wrath (I like mass creature removal...) 3 Armageddon (I like mass land removal...) 2 Plowshares 1 Humility (Good, I like 1, they're good against fat creatures and frenetics but I think they're a little too slow for White Weenie) 3 Aura of Silence (I prefer these over disenchants in a deck like this just because it basically lets them not play the disks, and the other enchant/art cause of the geddons and worbs) 3 Gerrard's Wisdom (May seem like a lot but I'd rather not lose to Sligh) 3 Sky, 3 Marble, 1 Moss Diamonds 3 Serrated Aarows (of course) 3 Winter Orbs (of course) 4 Icy Manipulators (of course) 3 Undiscovered Paradise (Color screw sucks and of course these work great with Worb) 3 Plateau 3 Savannah 4 Tundra 3 Mishra (the winner!) Overall I liked the deck and may play it again. A little low on lands and only 2 counterspells are things I'd like to change tho. Any comments/questions/bitchings e-mail me at baledjinn@aol.com Otherwise my work here is done, Michael Wolfensberger.